Author: Ashish Sharma
Publication: Business Standard
Date: May 16, 2002
URL: http://www.business-standard.com/archives/2002/may/50160502.059.asp
Hinduism and the Clash of Civilizations
David Frawley
Voice of India
David Frawley has turned Harvard
professor Samuel P Huntington's much-debated concept of the clash of civilisations
around and come up with an erudite Vedantic perspective.
His astute analysis is tempered
with a firm faith in the eventual triumph of Vedantic spirituality over
Western materialism. Hinduism and the Clash of Civilizations, like his
earlier works, is as much a critique of the Western model as it is a call
to action for the inert intellectuals of the Vedic tradition.
"The modern West emphasises the
material freedom of the individual to pursue desire, not the spiritual
freedom of the individual to transcend desire," he writes, as he points
out the constraint of a single Pope, a single Church and a single Book.
Frawley similarly exposes the inherent limitations and biases of the Western
response to Hinduism. "Western religious leaders only come to admire Hinduism
when it appears like monotheism, when the Vedas are like the Bible, or
when Krishna is like the Son of God," he writes. Missionaries, especially,
come in for criticism for their unabated agenda of conversion which, he
says, is a hangover of the medieval world and has no place in modern society.
Similarly, he derides the American co- ncept of globalisation as anything
but democratic. Above all, he takes on the West for its negation of the
Indic/Vedic/Hindu civilisation, the archaeological evidence notwithstanding,
and stresses the need for a new, Indian Indology.
"India needs a new Indology rooted
in an Indic school of thought, not in a Marxist, Christian, Capitalist
or Islamic school, which have their own points of view and cannot and will
not speak positively of the Indic tradition," he writes. Much like Swami
Dayanand Saraswati, Ramakrishna Paramhansa and Sri Aurobindo, he advocates
a return to the Vedas. "Just as the Asuras stole the Vedas in previous
yugas and the Gods had to win them back, Western Indologists are the modern
Asuras who have tried to capture the Vedas in the contemporary world. It
is time for a new group of Devas to win them back," he exhorts.
Frawley's work has much to enlighten
the student of history, politics and international relations. Post- Gujarat,
his view of the Indian Right might appear too benign but his exposition
of the disconnect between the Indian and Western political divides is nonetheless
instructive.
"In the United States, where I live,
I have supported ecology, animal rights and the cause of pluralism in religion,
which the right wing here opposes. But in the Indian context I am labelled
right-wing or even fascist for raising the same issues," he writes.
The 52-year-old American author
-- who runs the American Institute of Vedic Studies in Santa Fe, New Mexico
- is one of the foremost contemporary authorities on the intricacies of
Vedanta and its related traditions of Yoga, Ayurveda, Vedic astrology and
Tantra. Over the past 25 years, he has been tirelessly promoting Vedantic
philosophy through his writings, teachings and talks. How I Became A Hindu:
My Discovery of Vedic Dharma, published in 2000, describes how he came
to adopt Indian philosophy, got the title of Pandit and was named Vamadev
Shastri after the Vedic rishi Vamadev.
Frawley's works are important not
because he is an insider ridiculing the West but because he understands
the essence of Hinduism better than most of our homegrown commentators.
And, more important, his analyses seldom place faith over observable truth.
It is a pleasure to read him.
