Digestion of Hinduism: Inside the American Veda

The first part of my notes-to-self covered my interpretation of digestion, a term coined by Rajiv Malhotra. This lead to an active twitter debate that led to many questions, mostly centered around Phil Goldberg's 'American Veda', which was previously critiqued elsewhere as facilitating digestion, and a stand which I support. I fact, I have found that AV does a lot more than that. It also directly digests and misrepresents Hinduism, and celebrates the digestion of Hinduism, perhaps unintentionally. This second set of notes will add more substance and take some of those follow-up questions as a starting point.

Throughout these posts, the emphasis in bold/underline/quotes are mine. Often direct quotes are italicized. Let me state upfront that I admire Goldberg's candid admissions. I believe he is Jewish, and therefore does not proselytize. This is my critique of his work, as well as the other interviews and articles he has written. There are places in the book AV where he even agrees that Indian methods and dharmic ideas have been misappropriated. But his disappointing response is to kick the can down the road to the Hindu advocacy groups to deal with the Hindu image issue, and washes his hands off, i.e. 'it is not my problem'. Fair enough. He is not Hindu, and this book is not about Hinduism. AV is a book written by the west, of the west, and for the west. Hindus and Hinduism are but props in the AV stage.

[update Dec 23: typos fixed]



Cover Page
American Veda: How Indian Spirituality Changed the West

American Veda and Indian spirituality implies that Hindu religious concepts are tied to a geography. There is no call-out in the book of the universal truth claims of Karma and Punar Janma of Hinduism and the universality of dharma - the latter is the single-most important thing, in my opinion, a Hindu reader should look for in such books: Ask what is the status of dharma in the book? It is totally ignored in the title. The title suggests that the book starts with some fuzzy "spirituality" from India toward building a new American Veda suitable for western consumption without the stench of Hinduism's caste, cows, and curry.

Strong words? read on and make up your own mind.

Foreword by Huston Smith
Who is this Huston Smith and why did Goldberg pick him to write the foreword?
He's described a 90+ year old "rock star of religions". My ignorance. I never heard of this chap, so I looked him up. Here are some interesting snippets.

"Smith was born in 1919 in China, where his parents were Christian missionaries...."

Smith: "... "I happen to be a Christian. I was brought up and drenched in that," he said. "I am very orthodox in thinking that Jesus acted in his life the way God would have acted if God had assumed human form... I think that God imploded, like a spiritual big bang, to launch the eight civilizations that make up recorded history and the religions in those civilizations.""

Zero connection with dharma so far, but we see Mr. Smith clearly state where his roots are: History-centric Christianity.

Here's the Wikipedia entry on his religious practice that examines other religions (including, and in particular, Hindu Vedanta) for many years, he returning to his Christian roots to write this book:
"The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition"

 Here's an Amazon.com blurb on what this restored Christianity looks like:
"... "I have tried to describe a Christianity which is fully compatible with everything we now know, and to indicate why Christians feel privileged to give their lives to it."
—Huston Smith

.... In his most personal and passionate book on the spiritual life, renowned author, scholar, and teacher of world religions Huston Smith turns to his own life-long religion, Christianity....Smith cuts through these to describe Christianity's "Great Tradition," the common faith of the first millennium of believers, which is the trunk of the tree from which Christianity's many branches, twigs, and leaves have grown. This is not the exclusivist Christianity of strict fundamentalists, nor the liberal, watered-down Christianity practiced by many contemporary churchgoers..."


Right in the introductory pages available for free at Amazon.com, you can clearly see Smith states that he visited India may times and learnt of "dharma" before proceeding to digest Dharma into the Christian notion. His exact words on how he redefines dharma: "It is the duty that God has imposed on me". Being a Christian, he is of course referring to a monotheist God who is a task-master.  The meaning of dharma has been totally inverted. This is the abysmal level of scholarship and mis-translation of Sanskrit, which we see in other chapters of the AV book too.

In the first chapter of Smith's book, after the introduction, Smith talks of his new Christian world view, where the very first set of paragraphs attempts to mangle the dharmic idea of "Purna" made famous by the famous Shloka. Next, tackles at causation (related to Karma...), at which point I cried halt. The foreword to AV cites a single verse from the Christian bible where false equivalences for Bhakti, Jnana, and Karma is given! Rock star.


Foreword writers are deliberately and carefully chosen, and usually for deep reasons. AV's foreword writer is a famous and devout Christian, the son of two devoted missionaries who studied Vedanta for long, and visited India several times, and ultimately used this information, not to become Hindu or dharmic, but to repair and re-invent an improved Christianity for the west using digested versions of Hindu concepts.

This is how American Veda begins and ends. This is the template.

Theme of American Veda
Goldberg is sincere westerner who is looking to improving the condition of his country and repairing their society and religion. To achieve this task, he, like Huston Smith, uses Hinduism as a tool-box containing an useful assortment of nuts and bolts, from which the west can freely select compatible parts to plug the gaping holes in their systems. Chapter after chapter in this book is not about how Hinduism and India benefits from the interaction with the west, but the total opposite.  Which begs the question:

If AV is about utilizing bits and pieces of Hindu ideas deleted from their Indian context, and suitably modified to enhance Christianity, Judaism, and western health care, etc., why the heck are the useful Hindu idiots cheering, showcasing, and funding such works? What has India and dharmic systems got in return from the US for this? ZILCH.

Much of American Veda is a biographical celebration of who's who of U-turners and digesters:

Maslow, Bensen, Ken Wilber, Carl Jung, Father Keating, ....

and a bunch of opportunists like Deepak Chopra who have made a lot of money selling faux-Vedantic snake oil to a gullible western audience. This blogpost links to a video lecture of Rajiv Malhotra that walks through an entire list of U-turners and digesters. We won't go into these biographies, even though they make for fascinating and bewildering reading. In this remainder of this part of the self-study, I cover the introduction and the first chapter of AV, focusing on Goldberg's own words and annotations. I highlight just a few of the many gaping holes in this book that makes a mockery of dharmic concepts and try to point out how these mangled ideas facilitate digestion.

For more background and context on American Veda and Phil Goldberg, readers can read this blog: digestingveda.blogspot.in. We owe the writer a thanks.


Chapter - Introduction
1. Here, PG starts off providing a list of excuses about why he has not used Hinduism in the title. Clearly, he is aware this would become an issue. Some reasons include:
a.  "people will misconstrue the nature of this book". (Exactly how?)

b. [Opportunistic] gurus who came to the west said they were not preaching Hinduism (so?)

c. Yoga and Vedanta do not have to be viewed religiously at all ...

2. As far as Buddhism, he equates the Buddha to Jesus as a reformer. I would seriously contest this as another false equivalence, but some other day. This book does not credit Buddhism in the cover either. Of Jainism or Sikhism, I could find no mention.

3. He calls Yoga and Vedanta, India's major export. Despite that, India has not seen one dollar in returns yet!

4. He finds India's epic 'tales' of Ramayana and Mahabharata to be rich in 'magic and mystery', and makes the Iliad and Odyssey look like short stories.

5. Page 10:
Goldberg offers us this gem: infinite divine can be called Allah, Lord, or Brahman, which is justified citing 'Ekam sat Vipraha bahudha vadanti'.
 
Shockingly poor scholarship fills the American Veda. Goldberg is honest enough to concede that he is not confident about the completeness of the translation of the Vedantic principles he cites by adding caveats such as "does not pretend to do justice to Vedanta...". What can we be sure of in AV then?

The above reasoning is a distortion of Hinduism, designed to propagate the myth of sameness. Doing so allows him to move on to his next, and by far, most serious error, which opens the door to wholesale digestion.

6. On Page 11, Goldberg claims:
 "Vedantic principles are accompanied by Vedic concepts of Karma.... and reincarnation. Most applications of Vedanta-Yoga do not require these supplementary ideas, and ordinary practitioners in the west do not necessarily believe in them"

Supplementary ideas?!

Karma (cause and effect) and Punar Janma (Reincarnation) are central and fundamental truth-claims of dharmic thought system. Hinduism (and its pluralism of manifestations), Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists subscribe to this. These dharmic fundamentals are precisely the ones that the Judeo-Christian system is incompatible with, and this is also exactly why Goldberg has deliberately brushed them aside as unimportant waste material that can be rejected! Once we get rid of these crucial dharmic elements, the mutilated remainder of the Hindu concepts can be digested into JC systems, without hurting their history-centric dogma.  This is exactly what was stated in part-1. In Philip Goldberg's own words, we have clear evidence of digestion being facilitated.

7. On the same page, PG favorably compares Vedanta to perennialism. Rajiv Malhotra has previously stated that "The whole Perennial Philosophy is merely stage-2 of the uturn." AV systematically glorifies (as Rajiv Malhotra put it) these so-called western pioneers, who in reality, just reassembled and repackaged many of the original ideas from dharmic systems.

8. In Page 12, he says "whether it's a falafel or philosophy, Americans embrace foreign products when the circumstances are right, and conditions in the United States were right for Vedanta-Yoga from the start"

Falafel. Vedanta-Yoga. foreign product (!)

Wow, such reverence and seriousness.

This is the author that Ms. Nirmala Seetharaman's foundation found worthy enough to invite for a talk, and for RSS to promote? that certain Sanathana Dharma institutions showered money on?



These are just the first few pages. Toward the end of the book, there are sections where it appears like Goldberg is practically showing Padres/Rabbis how such digested Vedanta-Yoga' can improve the situation in their church and synagogue without impacting their central dogma. He also does this in a Huffington Post article. Indeed as early as page 23-24, Goldberg very honestly states his intentions. Indeed, AV is a very honest book. I'm sure PG believes in his mind that he's doing a lot of good.

9. In his own words, we can find the real reason for deleting Hinduism/Buddhism/Sikhism/Jainism from this book:

 "This [book] is not a threat to Western religions; Americans are not about to abandon their churches, synagogues, and mosques, for Hindu temples. Figures of Shiva and Krishna will not replace crosses in American homes."

It is very, very clear. Hinduism has NO role in this book, and he sees no role for Hinduism in American homes. He is seeking not to replace dogmatic Judeo-christian ideology with dharmic ideas as many gullible Hindus believe. Instead, he is seeking to complement and solidify the existing dogma with a digested Hindu layer. This is precisely what was mentioned in part 1. In his own words, we have the evidence of the outcome of digestion.  Once this happens, this enhanced Christianity can be re-exported to India. Conversion in India will be a piece of cake. This is what India gains from digestion.

Still not convinced? then read further ...
"Exposure to eastern spirituality is more likely to strengthen a person's relationship to his or her native religion than to destroy it".

Goldberg has gone out of his way to calm his western audience and his publishers. This book is not about bringing dharma to replace dogma. This is about making Judeo-Christianity stronger to stem the flow of disenchanted members out of their system.

I could go on. There are nearly 400 pages in this book, and I have covered less than 25 in this post since I do not have a digital copy to expedite this work. There are more fallacies and errors to point out, but that will take up a lot of space and is left as an exercise to the reader. I will however add one final point on the comments that Goldberg makes in page 292, to illustrate the kind of lame arguments used to justify digestion.

"One physician told me "But replacing the the orange robe with a white lab coat opens it up to a lot more people". So does calling meditation a stress-reduction technique, not a sadhana for achieving moksha. We will never know how many heart attacks were prevented, or how many millions of pills were not taken, because of that decision.

There is another place in the book where a false argument of "Indian philosophy versus Western science" argument is given. Digestion of Yoga into all these medical buzzwords is justified since it gives these methods the requisite "scientific legitimacy".  Mr. Goldberg: Indians, Tibetans, Sri Lankans, Indonesians, and many millions in Asia (not just India) for centuries benefited scientifically from Yoga, without having to mutilate Yoga and delete moksha, and did not require white lab coats to "make it look" scientific. It always was scientific, and dharmic religions have never been in conflict with science. This silly justification insults intelligence.
 

Conclusion and Summary
Based on my study, I personally find American Veda to be a mediocre and error-ridden piece of work that directly enables, and also (perhaps inadvertently) celebrates digestion while moving toward a goal of ensuring that western society derives maximum benefits from the Hindu toolbox, taking what it deems to be compatible and useful (dharma-nirpeksha stuff), and discarding the rest.

Digestion is not an end-goal. It is not easy to spot unless you examine the end-state of the Hindu concept being appropriated. It is merely a means to an end. Usually, that end-goal is to preserve and enhance Western religion. The primary goal is neither to harm or help the cause of dharma. Rather they are indifferent to it. Impact on Hinduism and dharma is collateral damage, which authors may express regret about, but is not really their concern.

It's time we stop celebrating every new and shiny piece of work that comes of the west just because it is superficially favorable to Hinduism. That's a symptom of mental colonization. Let's first fund and support those among our own who are busting their backs coming up with high-quality work. Being brown should not be a disqualification.

What the heck does 'minority' mean, anyway?

This post is written in the Indian context.

If minority status means 'economically backward', join the queue, there are millions ahead of you in the line. You are not a minority (thanks to Nehruvian socialism).

If minority status means 'socially and educationally backward', then petition the leaders of your community to adopt more liberal, dharmic, and scientific thinking, and do away with dogma. Seek government intervention if things don't change, but the ultimate solution lies inside, not anywhere outside (thanks to Nehruvian secularism).

If minority status means 'numerical census count by religion', then check if your religion is monotheist. If not, you may indeed be a minority. If it is, then your religion is almost surely a global, several trillion-dollar power center that supports you and advocates on your behalf on every single important religious issue. Its headquarters is located either in the middle east or Europe, and you will find that you are reporting to the local leader in this mammoth chain of command, and your organization is free from government interference. You even have the powers to convert people to your religion by persuasion, force, or, bribe. This more likely makes you a 'majority', rather than a 'minority'. anywhere in the world.

If minority status means 'minority voice in a democracy', then check if you are voting as a group. If you are a vote bank, and your vote bank is bigger than other vote banks, you aren't really a minority.

So the smallest minority is an individual. Not so fast. A single person armed with a semi-automatic weapon in a crowd of thousand, while technically being a minority, practically represents the majority despite being outnumbered 1000:1. Numerical metrics mean little. The group or person that controls the rights to, or can buy the biggest gun in town is the majority. Examples:

The apartheid minority in South Africa versus the native African majority, the colonizing European minority versus the Native American, and of course, the adharmic dynasties lording over the dharmic majority in India over the last millennium. If you have the means to directly or indirectly control the majority market-share of wealth, public discourse, foreign policy, populist projects and 'quotas', real estate, legislations and ordinances, then you certainly aren't a minority.

Reverse the gaze, and what was obfuscated becomes clear. Terminological tyranny is another clever means of achieving mental colonization. In the pluralistic Hindu culture of India, the meaning of 'minority' is unambiguous and useful only when it is applied in context; universal application of this term is extremely fuzzy if not outright gibberish. For example, if minority is applied in the context of "maliciously neglected, and deliberately vilified people", then patriots are India's only real minority.

History Centrism: Contradiction Networks

What is a contradiction network? Google generates a limited number of results for this phrase, none of which match how we plan to use this fairly simple concept in the latest installment of our ongoing research into the effects of History Centrism, a definitive phrase introduced by Rajiv Malhotra in his recent book "Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism".  First, we provide a brief recap of the work done so far (feel free to endorse or challenge/improve this work by providing substantiated corrections via counter-examples, etc, to help take this research forward).

Recap
We present a deterministic analytical model of a History-Centric Thought System (HCTS) that among other things, stipulates membership and non-membership criteria (Part 1). This model also helps in making a statement about the stability of membership (Part 2) as well as predict how the duality implied by HCTS drives its interaction with non-members, including non HC groups and alternative HC groups (Part 3). We then comment on how the Western HCTS shapes the overall 'master narrative', i.e. the monoculture of Western Universalism (Part 4). 

We now analyze how and why the membership based on a HCTS protects the claims listed in its historical prior P. To motivate this, we present another implication of the Separation Theorem stated in Part-1.

Implication: A HCTS is a closed and static system
Proof: Given the unique and non-reproducible historical claims of the prior, it follows that no (extraneous) event or discovery at any point in time can dynamically induce an amendment in the definition and rules of membership since doing so would result in a new HCTS that invalidates prior P.

What are the consequences of this implication? 
a. Since the HTCS was non-existent before time(s) T, the unique point(s) on the time-axis at which the event(s) cited in prior P occurred, any event in the universe that occurred prior to T that contradicts the claims of P is deemed not to occurred and hence ignored.

b. Any scientific theory proposed after time T that if accepted would contradict prior P, is rejected. Such rejection proactively applies to any such future discovery. If a theory is confirmed (and becomes a 'law') via newly observed data, thereby rendering parts of P fictitious, then such implications are ignored. This includes any future scientific evidence that uncover past facts (via carbon dating, archeology, etc).

In general, empirical and scientific contradictions that result from prior P are not resolved but ignored (by resorting to self-referential justifications based on the prior P if necessary).

Contradiction Networks

Over a period of time, such a response by the HCTS results in an accumulation of contradictions leading to many members disowning membership. Such a situation can be conceptually represented by a contradiction network or a contradiction graph, a construct for systematically identifying the sequence of implications underlying a mass of contradictions. Mounting scientific evidence that contradicts prior P results in this contradiction network becoming both denser and larger. Consequently, rather than trying to improve the quality of life of its adherents, the HCTS management is forced to spend a large proportion of its time and resources trying to decipher and defend this maze of contradictions. This may lead to:

- defending against criminal and civil lawsuits around the world,

- proposing and funding support for literature that promotes prior-friendly alternatives and pseudo-scientific theories to refute contradicting claims,

- penalizing members, and in general discouraging dissent by stipulating an infinite posterior penalty for infringements (e.g. "eternal hell")

- silencing opposition via:
   i)  counter-claims of contradiction against competing HCTS,
   ii) reflect back claims of human right violations, superstition, and discrimination against non HCTS, and
  iii) penalties against wavering members.

- obfuscating (but not eliminating) the duality implied by the core HC model by adding additional unverifiable layers of HC thought as well as useful metaphysics and practical methods derived from the inner sciences digested from non-HCTS systems. We elaborate on this particular aspect in the next post.

Monoculture: A cultural outcome of History-Centrism

History-Centrism is a phrase coined by Rajiv Malhotra to describe the thought system associated with religions like Judeo-Christianity. The members subscribe to a belief in a unique, non-reproducible historical prior event and Monotheism is the corresponding theology, i.e.
History-centrism + Divinity ⇒ Monotheism

In this post, we examine the impact of History-Centrism on the dominant contemporary cultural narrative. In this context, a phrase that is becoming popular is monoculture. This term assumes a special significance in the context of agriculture where it describes the planting of a single crop over a large land area. Vandana Shiva argues that such a practice (foisted upon India by the West) has had a devastating impact on Indian agriculture and is non-robust and hence non-sustainable. Just like having a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds affords better protection against market volatility, maintaining biodiversity tends to have a similar positive effect on ecology. In the human world, cultural diversity works much the same way in maximizing the chances of finding alternative working solutions to contemporary world problems.

A good description of monoculture in recent times is given by F. S. Michaels in her recent book "Monoculture: How One Story Is Changing Everything and is neatly summarized here: "The governing pattern a culture obeys is a master story– one narrative in society that takes over the others, shrinking diversity and forming a monoculture. When you’re inside a master story at a particular time in history, you tend to accept its definition of reality. You unconsciously believe and act on certain things, and disbelieve and fail to act on other things. That’s the power of the monoculture; it’s able to direct us without us knowing too much about it.”

Note the key-phrases: 'history', 'master story', 'unconscious acceptance of a definition of reality', 'acting on this unconsciously, but disbelieving and not acting on that'. 

We postulate that:
History-centrism + Culture ⇒ Monoculture

What is root cause of monoculture? Where is/was it more prevalent? Where is it not?

Apparently, a culture that is fundamentally rooted in history-centrism is more likely to produce monoculture that issues unwritten and written guidelines on the correct way to dress, how you should be eating your food, how you should raise your kids, ... In short, there is one "best" way of doing things, and if you don't conform, your life can quickly become difficult. The world is split into those who cave in to the master narrative and those who don't. There are no wholly acceptable alternative cultures. This is duality at its best - the same duality that (we argued a few posts ago) is guaranteed by History-Centrism.

So what is the most dominant monoculture (MC) in the world? F. S. Micheals argues that monotheist religion was the dominant MC a long time ago, followed by a MC of science that relegated art and religion, leading to today's MC of economic value. However, the author herself has failed to note that she used 'world' often while implicitly assuming that if a MC holds true for the 'west', then it holds true for the world.

In other words, the truly dominant monoculture in the world is really the Western way of thought and action, of which economic value is just a component. Western Universalism. Today's de-facto global finishing school. Western universalism appears to be what the world (and i mean the world) unconsciously considers to be the standard to live up to in virtually every aspect, without giving his much critical thought. This is precisely one of the themes that Rajiv Malhotra appears to be opposing and presents his counter-arguments in his latest book: "Being Different: An Indian challenge to Western Universalism". Why Indian? India probably had/has the longest continuous cultural diversity on the planet. This is not by accident and is an designed outcome of the pioneering discoveries of Indian Rishis in the world of inner sciences that lead to several co-existing non-dual schools of philosophy (all Dharmic) that has defined Indian thought. Non-duality and monoculture do not go together. Dharmic thought systems look inward and focus on self-realization and has little time to waste on conforming to or prescribing master narratives. Historically, there has always been a healthy and peaceful exchange of ideas and cross-pollination of Indian sub-cultures for a very, very long time. For example, this picture (thanks to @brainpicker) shows the linguistic diversity of India (~1992). The various language labels used are probably West-given and may be inaccurate.

This co-existence based approach of the Dharmic thought system has preserved the authenticity of experience by preventing the sub-cultures from getting digested by a 'superior monoculture' and excreted (which is how history-centric duality works in practice). And it is no accident that Vandana Shiva is from India and is leading the fight against agricultural monoculture.

Is it then any surprise that this western monoculture appropriates and de-contextualizes a Yoga from such a peaceful Dharmic thought system, strips it of its non-dual Sanskrit, turns into a patentable calisthenics-market that spawns patent lawsuits, then proceeds to tie itself up in a pretzel-asana and complains that Yoga is a dangerous practice, and inevitably ends up in a good old dualistic tussle between Yoga and non-Yoga followers, and Yoga-A and Yoga-B followers ....

Analysis of History-Centrism - Part 2

In the first part, we analyzed a simple logical model of membership associated with a history-centric thought system (HCTS), a pivotal discovery of Rajiv Malhotra that is delineated in his amazing new book "Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism" where he has reversed the gaze on the west and analyzed their thought systems from an Indian perspective. Using even this simple model, we were able to show that duality, given HC, is a mathematical certainty. The sufficiency condition of the membership rule (which is also necessary) allows a great deal of flexibility and latitude in terms of how members can deal with members and non-members In this sequel, we consider additional implications and start to make statements on how their members are likely to interact with non-members, and comment on the stability of the membership.

Implication 4: History-Centrism implies Human-Centrism
Proof: result follows from the Separation Theorem in Part-1. (It is likely that at some point this human-centrism is practically interpreted as human supremacy over the universe). Similarly, HC also implies Geo-centrism. To analyze how such notions of duality affect the stability of their membership, we first define size:

Given a closed local population system of cardinality N that is in equilibrium, the size is defined as the fraction s (between 0 and 1.0) of the population that are members of a given HTCS

Membership Stability Postulate [work in progress]
If the material socioeconomic incentives and penalties for a local population are equal and independent of membership status, then the rate of change (s') with respect to time, is likely to be negative.

Proof: Since the beliefs in P cannot be verified at any point of time in future give the claim of a unique, non-reproducible event in the history, there is a non-zero probability = the fraction 0 < f/s < 1 of the current members will reject the hypothesis of P at any point in time and become non-members in the absence of any penalty to leave or incentive to stay. In other words, a subset of members think of P as a Bayesian prior. Furthermore, there is no incentive gain for non-members (who by definition have rejected P) to satisfy the necessary condition. Consequently in such a scenario, the size asymptotically approaches zero.

Corollary: The membership size associated with a HCTS in such a decentralized scenario will never be in stable equilibrium.

Given this, the membership can let the HCTS die a natural death or mobilize (via a centralized authority) and attract new members to survive. How? An implication of the stability theorem is that the only viable alternatives are:
a. erect barriers to exit from membership
b. provide incentives to attract new members
c. increase the per-capita family size of members

Example: Christianity in the West and in India
In part-1 we showed that churches that subscribed to the Nicene creed belonged to one particular HTCS. The exit rate from such churches in the west is steady and given that:
a. There is little incremental social or financial incentive for westerners to rejoin the church, and
b. The chronic inability to re-enact the events of P to validate the claimed hypothesis,
has driven an ever increasing number of people in the west into Yoga-based, non-exclusive, non-HCTS systems that focus on the inner sciences, like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism (conjecture: most of them don't know they are H/B/J). The law of the land may stipulate that penalties for exit are illegal, and given that increasing family size is never really a scalable idea, the only viable option for survival is to focus on emerging markets.

A populous country like India that has only recently started re-developing its economy toward regaining its world market share that was sizable until 1750 CE (and then dwindled to near zero due to European colonialism). Consequently, today's India is characterized by significant variations in social and economic status and a lack of clarity and uniformity in laws concerning coerced conversions, thereby making it an attractive region for recruitment, regardless of the negative impact it has on the local culture and society (duality at work again!). Similar to the cost-driven advantage of outsourcing IT work to India-based companies, the church can make a dollar go much farther in India compared to the US or Europe. This move by the churches to expand its membership is laying the seeds for an active duality-driven conflict that existed in a 'cold-war' mode until recently.

Here's a link to an interesting geographical picture of the world religions in 1895:

and this is the 2012 picture (along with future projections).

Analysis of History-Centrism - Part 1

A fundamental difference between Dharmic Thought Systems that originated in India and the Judeo-Christian type that dominates the west is that the former is primarily characterized by philosophical schools of thought focused on self-realization and the 'inner sciences', whereas a defining feature of the latter is History-centrism (HC). This is just one of the many important findings of Dr. Rajiv Malhotra that are mentioned in his revolutionary new book: "Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism". Dharmic thought systems (DTS) of India (including the faiths of Hinduism, Jainism, Sikkism, and Buddhism) are characterized by the absence of such history-centricity. On the other hand,  an examination of their Itihaas, writings, and the recorded debates indicate that the core beliefs were and are guided by one or more philosophical schools of thought.

Reading Dr. Malhotra's book, I was struck by the clearly delineated 'business rule' driven nature of the institutions of HC that centrally manage the religion that arises from the history-centric thought. This meant that it is quite possible to precisely define and represent their membership rules using logical and mathematical models (!)  In this post (first of a series), we begin to explore this idea in depth, and hope to take it to its logical conclusion over time. The use of such a technique allows us to bring into play all the well-defined and universally understood rules of logic and mathematical modeling and infer the rich set of daisy-chain like implications that arise from HC. This in turn will help us better understand the impact it will have in the future on its adherents as well as non-adherents. For example, the hope is that, among other things, it will enable us to go beyond circumstantial evidence and rhetoric and more precisely answer questions like "does the theology of HC religions automatically imply a quest for eventual world domination?", or "does an enforcing of HC automatically imply a violation of the human rights of its own adherents at some level?", etc.

At this point in time, we do not formally finalize rigorous definitions, leaving them tentative and open to discussion, criticism, and corrections. We first state the logical model and then provide a concrete example to illustrate the same. Note: We use the word deterministic here to mean "with 100% probability", i.e. absolute certainty.

[Tentative] Definition
A history-centric thought system (HCTS) is defined by a single unique prior event,  (or fully enumerated and completed prior events, every one of which is unique) 'P' that is assumed to have deterministically occurred in history, even if data corresponding to such an observation is not available for validation or implied in the historical data available at any point in time after the occurrence of P.

Membership rule: A deterministic belief in this prior 'P' is both a necessary and sufficient condition for formal acceptance into the corresponding HCTS. The term 'prior' used here is analogous to that used in the domain of mathematical probability (Bayesian) models and turns out to be a useful aid for understanding and predicting the response of members associated with any given HTCS :
 
Implication 1
The prior P is non-reproducible

Proof: It follows from the definition that in a HCTS, the events defined by P are expected to never occur again even in a probabilistic sense (because if it did, it implies that either the events of P are likely to be non-unique or have not yet been enumerated with certainty).

Implication 2

Given a set of members of a HCTS, we can plausibly predict that their response to a future event to be consistent with the prior. 

Proof: Follows from the 'necessary condition' part of the membership rule.

Implication 3 
Beliefs in another thought system does not result in disqualification only if it does not conflict with prior P.

Proof: This follows from the sufficiency condition. These implications leads to the following key implication:

Separation Implication (Duality)

A belief in an alternative thought system results in disqualification if and only if it conflicts with prior P. 

Proof: The 'if' part of the statement follows from the necessary-condition, and the 'only if' part follows from the sufficiency condition.

We can call this result the 'separation implication' because it in effect bisects the time and space axis into two distinct regions. For example:


Application of the Separation Implication along the time-scale

Given the uniqueness of P at a point in time T(P), it is clear that the prior bisects the time-axis into two regions: (-∞, T(P)), i.e. before 'P' and (T(P),∞),i.e., 'after P'. Consequently, for any time before 'P', every entity is disqualified by definition and the member set is empty.


We now use the Christian thought system (CTS) as an illustrative example.



Prior
The beliefs of the Nicene creed form the prior P for the CTS. It includes [verification needed here. tentative]
a. The immaculate conception and Virgin Mary
b. Original sin
c. Jesus is the son of God / resurrection

Membership: A belief in each of these three elements this prior is a non-negotiable prerequisite for entry into most of the mainstream churches in Christian HTS (ref: Being Different)

Implication 1
Another equivalent immaculate conception, a return to Adam/Eve, and a daughter or another son of God, an equally divine son of another God, can never occur again. This guarantees the monotheism of Christianity.

Implication 2

Regardless of the context, rational members will never subscribe to thoughts that violate the CTS prior. For example, the movie 'Da Vinci Code' attempted to break the determinism of Prior components (a) and perhaps (c), and thus comes into direct conflict with the defining characteristics of CTS, and thus opposed.

Implication 3 
A member of the CTS can dress like an Indian, learn Carnatic music, light incense sticks in front of Ganesha, do 'Yoga', and use moral ideas from the Vedas, and quote the Thirukkural. None of this comes into conflict with the above prior and thus does not imply disqualification. This result in turn implies that such cultural data can be digested into the CTS without conflict.  A member can marry a non-CTS and permit his/her spouse to retain their original faith (or non-faith). What is more interesting is the membership of the progeny that is an output of such a union. A statistical study may reveal interesting results here.

The Separation Implication applied to CTS
A person can memorize the ten commandments and follow all the positive teachings of love and forgiveness attributed to Jesus, but he/she remains disqualified unless he/she swears belief in prior P. An important and direct consequence of the Separation implication is human duality since it separates the population on the planet into two distinct binary categories. Those who are human and exclusive members and those those who are not (including plants, animals, and all other non-humans on this planet and ETs).

Similarly, a person who believes in the concepts of original divinity and the non-duality of the universe is disqualified from membership since it violates the notion of duality inherent in the prior (why?).

Application of the Separation Implication along the time-scale
Anybody in this universe before the Christian Prior were non-members.

In future posts, we will bring out additional implications and discuss more topics from Rajiv Malhotra's amazing book.

Update: March 25, 2012
Bayesian Prior versus History-Centric Prior
We start with a useful but non-rigorous Wikipedia descriptions of a Bayesian prior:
" [A prior] is meant to attribute uncertainty rather than randomness to the uncertain quantity ..."

"A prior is often the purely subjective assessment of an experienced expert."

At this point in the process, there is little difference between a HC prior defined in this post and a Bayesian prior. However in the latter case, as new empirical data becomes available, the belief, expressed in terms of a probability distribution, is updated to take this new information into account and does not remain static. After a sufficiently many observations, the probability distribution is almost completely data-driven, losing its original subjectivity. On the other hand, a belief based on a HC prior is indifferent to new data and remains frozen in time. It must be noted that a some of the HCTS members will not behave in this manner and eventually reject their membership once they recognize the seemingly irreversible conflicts between the newly observed data and the unique historic prior (more about this in Part-2). In other words, a HCTS can become a relatively more inclusive and rational system by re-modeling its prior in terms of a Bayesian prior. Unfortunately, this means 'loss of membership' and a rejection of prior P.