Book Review and Notes on "Indra's Net : Defending Hinduism's Philosophical Unity" by Rajiv Malhotra

Goal of the book

1. Nexus of Western scholars specializing in creating and sustaining dominant narratives. Subvert such vested interests.
2. Inspiring "Intellectual Kshatriyas" who will carry forward the defence of Hinduism against these special interest groups.
3. "Invading the Sacred" book broke the grip of Freudian pseudo-analysis of Hinduism
4. "Breaking India" book brought awareness of fissioning forces subverting culture and identity of Bharat to make it easy prey for vested interests.
5. "Being Different" book exposed propensity of Western Universalism to digest other cultures by mapping their concepts onto ours. "Finding similarities" or manufacturing them.
6. "Indra's Net" book exposes attacks at integrity of Hinduism by claims that everything good is derived from Western Science and Religion and Everything bad is inherent in Hinduism. Also trying to malign and undermine Swami Vivekananda's worldview by claims of "Neo-Hinduism".
7. "Indra's Net" from Atharva Veda taken up in Buddhism - "Everything is a reflection of Everything"
8. Vivekananda's 'tat tvam asi ethics' i.e revival of seva as Karma Yoga based totally on Vedic Thought.
9. Propounds that Hinduism has an "Open Architecture" with a "toolbox" of philosophies forming the Indian Universal worldview. Kind of like a distributed system made up of cooperating sub-cultures.
10. Open society is easily digested using 'salami tactics'. Suggests use of "porcupine defence" and "poison-pill-defence" as safeguards against digestion by Closed-Member-Based-Cultures. Kind of like GPL and LGPL in s/w terms.
11. Target audience is mainstream Hindus misinformed about their Sanskriti. Create a 'home team' of intellectual leaders to research, rearticulate Hinduism to current situation.
12. Opposition from 'sickularists' and 'old-guard Hindus' claiming 'communalism' and 'deviation from tradition' respectively.
13. 'Darshan' is the aspect of 'embodied knowing by 'anubhava' in addition to reasoning and knowledge of texts.
14. 'Smritis' are regularly written and re-written as per context of that age.
15. West is confined to its own labels of 'traditional', 'modern', 'post-modern' at different times. Hinduism on the other hand has always allowed these 3 to co-exist.
16. Western view of Bharat tries to use its characterization of tradition as being backward to create and leverage conflicts and contradictions.

---

Main points raised in the book :

1. Openness of Hinduism allowing Indra's Net to reflect the inherent diversity of the universe. (Many ways to God/Self Realisation.)
2. 'Khandana' of manufactured idea of "Neo"-Hinduism and maligning of Swami Vivekananda. (Like the "real" Vasudeva Western imposters are 'pretending to the throne' by fabricating 'I-was-first' "history".)
3. Tracing lineage of Contemporary Hinduism to earliest traditions.
4. Exposing misappropriation and digestion of concepts, ideas in a piece-meal fashion by West. (Old 'soma' in new 'wine' bottles).
5. Anti-Digestive defense mechanisms against exploitation of Open-Architecture - 'porcupine-defense' and 'poison-pill-defense' to make explicit non-negotiables of core philosophy.
6. Respecting and living with different global points of view i.e. 'astika' and 'nastika'.

---