Indras Net: Defending Hinduisms Philosophical Unity by Rajiv Malhotra

Indras Net: Defending Hinduisms Philosophical Unity Reviews

• 
  Mayank Pandya

  I have read two books by Rajiv Malhotra – ‘Breaking India’ and ‘Being Different’ and Indra’s Net is third book by same author. This book is serious work. Indra’s Net is for those who are genuinely interested in knowing the correct history and interpretations of Hindu civilization and are willing and open minded to imbibe those thoughts in their ordinary lives as their age old customs, live those thoughts and pass on to next generation in their pristine originality. As with every work of his, Rajiv picks his subjects after deep insight into the issues and articulates them with great clarity. The subject matter of this book is to demonstrate the continuity of thoughts across a spectrum of Dhramic traditions. It demonstrates that there was no discontinuity in our philosophical traditions as is common perception. Although each work of Rajiv is independent as it deals with one specific issue, in my opinion if one has read Being Different, the pleasure of reading Indra’s Net increases many folds.
• 
  Surender Negi

  Indra’s Net is the most researched and valuable book of my collection on Hinduism.
  
  Indra’s net is written by Mr. Rajiv Malhotra Ji (Philanthropist, Scholar of Hinduism, Social Activist and Public speaker). This book is recommended by me, everyone who has interested to know deep culture of Adavita Vedanta and Swami Vivekananda.
  
  

  This book share many deep idea of Hinduism and reveal an conspiracy about academic misrepresentation of Swami Vivekananda character or work. This book, closely inquire the deep threat which is behind mind making against contemporary Hinduism. This book will open gate for new young mind who want to know more authentic reality of Hinduism and its deep and vibrant relation with nature.

  
  
  I would like to brief book in short.
  
  About Book
  
  

  Indra’s Net Started with an idea which is mentioned in Atharvaveda’s about reality of Cosmos. Indra’s Net is a philosophy which says “Every Living and Non Living things in cosmos is connected with each other in a deep web that each living thing represent cosmos or cosmos in macro level represent micro universe”.

  
  
  This book initially revolved around a group of people or linage of institute which propagates that modern Hinduism has no resemblance with ancient Hinduism. Modern Hinduism has based on Swami Vivekananda idea’s which borrow from Christianity. This book challenges this academic view and gives factual answer based on evidence that this assumption is nothing but only myth. This book also argue that how Indian unity without any stick boundary can be trace through scripture like Adavita Vedanta, school of Samkhya, school of dualism and Yoga sutra of Patanjali.
  This book breaks 8 famous myth of Hinduism which has been propagated by western academia from 1960’s to till date.
  
  I will describe all eight myths in short.
  
  • India’s Optimum state is balkanization
  • Colonial Indology’s biases were turned into Hinduism
  • Hinduism is manufactured and didn’t grow organically
  • Yogic experience is not valid path of enlighten and tries to copy western science
  • Western social ethics are incorporated as seva and karma yoga
  • Hinduism has no prior self-definition , unity and coherence
  • Hinduism is founded on oppression and sustained by it
  • Hinduism presumes sameness in all religions.
  
  This is school of neo Hinduism is started by Paul hacker and inherited by many another Indologist like Ushar King’s and Rambachan. Now this information which has been cultivated by Western academia from last four decade is now reached to deep core of every Hindu’s mind.
  
  This formation of myths making actually was attack on Swami Vivekananda efforts for reuniting the Hindus against social evil which was based on Adavita Vedanta.
  
  These so called secular and liberals group of academia wants to inject an inferiority complex in every Hindu mind that they are second class humans which has given enlightened through Jesus theological church.
  
  Most important point which I would like to highlight that, these group of academician has malign goal to established the theories which show that modern Hinduism is an experimental result of colonization and it has nothing to do with ancient Hinduism (which was according to them is oppressed and racial).
  
  At last this book explain, how Hinduism is currently getting digested by many giant academia and losing its originality after many flaw theory against ancient ideology.
  
  I would like to mention how we can help to not getting digest and use some poison pills which can protect authenticity.
  
  Hinduism can help when its maintain some core and fundamental theory without being intact.
  
  1) Hinduism should take strong stand that the all peoples in Hinduism are divine. (The Hindu Good News) Hence, There is no need to get salvation through Jesus because we are not born sinner while we are born divine who can experience divinity by any means of worshiped.
  
  2) Hinduism should take strong stand on theory of Re-Incarnation and Karma because this theory only explains the sudden death of children who haven’t done any sin. This rebirth theory will break this urgency of getting radical in one birth. This theory will give space to people, for revived their life.
  
  3) Hinduism should take strong position in living gurus. We all know that there is many enlightened Guru in our history like Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishnan Pramhans, Shri Arbindo, Swami Sajadanand (ancient Guru) and Swami Yogananad, Ramkrishan math, Swami PrabhuPadh-ISKON, Swami Pramukhanand-Swaminarayan Organisation, Swami Chinmayanand, Satguru or I want to Include Mr. Rajiv Malhotra in this list also for current living guru. Cause I am very much inspired by Him.
  
  4) Hinduism should take strong position on Jivamukati (A state of liberation after many births and experiencing the divine) .This position is totally different from concept of Heaven or Jannat or final judgement day. Because this position propagate karma and reincarnation or direct experience of divine without following way of any prophet.
  
  Things I Like:
  
  EVERYTHING
  
  Things I dislike
  
  Are you kidding? This book is must read book by every Indian and Hindus.
  
• 
  Aryaman Chetas Pandey

  Every Bharatiya must read, must read.
• 
  Cold Cream 'n' Roses

  In the first part of Indra’s Net, Rajiv Malhotra traces the lineage of scholars who posit a “neo-Hinduism” invented by Swami Vivekananda. The most recent of this lineage is
  Anantanand Rambachan of St. Olaf College, who claims that Swami Vivekananda’s reliance on direct experience is incompatible with Shankara’s reliance on sruti.
  
  Malhotra then proceeds to show that Rambachan’s concept of Hinduism is too narrow: namely, that Shankara did not dismiss direct experience out of hand and that Sankara’s Advaita Vedanta is but one system of knowing within Hinduism. Malhotra discusses how Hinduism has evolved over time and places Swami Vivekananda squarely in the Hindu tradition.
  
  In his lengthy article
  Untangling The False Knots In Rajiv Malhotra’s Indra’s Net, Anantanand Rambachan contends that Rajiv Malhotra distorts and misrepresents his work and responds to Malhotra’s principal allegations.
  
  Malhotra then discusses “digestion” of Hinduism. By digestion, he means the process by which people absorb the parts of Hinduism that they like and excrete (my word, not his) the parts they don’t like. A good example is the de-contextualization of yoga from Hinduism, whereas the rest of Hinduism is trashed.
  
  He introduces the concept of “poison pills” to prevent the “digestion” of Hinduism into other frameworks. These poison pills include characteristics of Hinduism (karma, re-incarnation, embodied knowing, integral unity) that cannot be reconciled with the traditional tenets of Abrahamic religion and force the spiritual seeker to make a choice among religions.
  
  Indra’s Net is more accessible than Malhotra's book
  Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism; however, Being Different and Indra’s Net re-enforce one another. I would have to read both books several times to fully understand the concepts that Rajiv Malhotra introduces. My 3-star rating is less about the merits of the book and more about the limits of my understanding.
  
• 
  Himanshu Chauhan

  Far from the common practitioner of dharmic traditions, among the western and westernized academia, for about more than half a century, a quasi literate bid to create an impression that the evolution of hinduism has stopped and the concurrent developments since Vivekananda are mere bastardization of christian values, has been leveraged as an impenetrable scholarship. This book tears into this flimsy facade made out bundles of eco chamber(isk) academic excellence.
  
  The book has five main point to introduce:
  1. How western civilization has appropriated several assets of eastern civilization (from Hinduism and Buddhism) which they now they call their own.
  2. The core of Dharmic/Buddhist philosophy via Indra's net
  3. That service and individual experience in India as promulgated by Vivekananda are not because of a short trip to Chicago but part of a long enduring tradition of revival and innovation which though has borrowings from the west but nevertheless is overwhelmingly part of the series of dharma tradition born out of a vedantic base.
  4. There are difference in the darshana (sanskrit non translatable; close to philosophy) of Shanakracharya and Vivekananda, yet non severs itself from the larger tree of vedic thought or dispels the other.
  5. A long going western attempt to present India as a synthetically united civilization is based out of utter misrepresentations non-sense that have become norm over time.
  
  My thoughts after reading the book was that it is a great tragedy that a narrative which is based out of unsound academic research and subject matter understanding ran as a mainstream understanding of Indic thought unchallenged for about a century. @RajivMessage has done us common folks great service by introducing this perversion of Dharmic thought to the general public in a concise and rather well argued book. It is a tough read for someone not acclimatized to the genre and it is ideal that one reads it more than once as once in a while the details become too thick.
• 
  Ashish Jaituni

  I didn't like the book! The author fails to respond to any of the philosophical problems raised by western philosophers regarding Hinduism though he is able to clearly define the problems posed by them. I have read better books!
• 
  Ishaan

  This book is a very specific rebuttal of selected biases against the Hindu culture that are misrepresented by some western academicians. It is worth a read if you want to know what's wrong (sometimes deliberately) in the academic circles.
• 
  Susheil Kumar

  a book which all Indians or South East Asians should read. An eye opener on the subject.
• 
  Veena

  The book talks about the academics and "religious" scholars who mislead the general populace about Hinduism/Sanatana Dharma. Overall, I have more questions upon completing the book. I feel like this book's subject matter can be well explored in a degree program or the subject of multiple doctoral thesis. This book is very dense and will require background reading/researching.
• 
  Ross Cohen

  Having already read Malhotra's "Being Different," I was looking forward to "Indra's Net."
  
  I was disappointed, however, in Malhotra's overall tone and the false promise of its title.
  
  "Indra's Net" is Malhotra's rebuttal to those who believe there is no unified Hinduism. He argues, forcefully and convincingly, that Hinduism is more than a cobbled-together assortment of rituals and texts – that it's a complete and evolving religion.
  
  Yet whereas Malhotra in "Being Different" was willing to take a stand and field criticism, he comes off as a man looking for a fight in "Indra's Net." His principal opponents are "the academics" – a phrase into which he injects as much spleen and derision as possible. I found this petty and somewhat hypocritical; a man who uses words and phrases like "reify" and "gaze through the Western lens" and "subaltern narratives" ought to ask himself who sounds more academic.
  
  This tone issue would not have been so bothersome had it not been for Malhotra's unifying image: Indra's Net.
  
  In all my readings of religions and philosophies, from Nietzsche to Narayan, from Stoics to Shunryu Suzuki, I've found no more beautiful image for existence and interdependance as Indra's Net, a net extending in infinite directions covered in jewels that reflect the net and each other. How unfortunate, then, that an image that contains all, reflects all, and causes all to shine has been appropriated by an author as antagonistic and exclusionary as Malhotra.
• 
  Hunter Ross

  The author is very knowledgable, obviously cares deeply about the subject matter and sometimes reads like a lecture (lots of references and objective information). That said, he obviously is very angry with "the West." Page 264: "…the widespread dismantling, rearrangement, and digestion of Hindu traditions into Western Framworks. The West (again I guess we are all the same and completely uniform) is actually depleting and exhausting the very roots of Indian civilization…" As detailed and meticulous as he is he constantly reduces the "West" to simplistic uniform point of view. There are people in the "West" who are very interested in learning about Indra's Net (there is disappointingly few details on this) and Hinduism's Philosophical point of view and the obvious negative tone can sometimes be discouraging.
• 
  Aditya Rallan

  While the book, for the most part, is more like an academic study on how Vivekananda and Hinduism have been misconstrued in the West, the last chapter is interesting with several takeaways. The chapter is not just a summary, but a practical guide to avoid common blunders, and develop an understanding of the cornerstones of Hinduism.
• 
  Sunny Zaptech

  Gives new insight to Dharma