Our idea of anything is shaped by the influence of some narrative that has entered our minds and stabilized itself. If our parents emphasized hard work and were hard working themselves, we will also make this narrative our own, live life on this narrative and pass this on to kids. Same goes for narratives like value for money, importance of ambition, charity, etc. Some dominant narrative has entered our minds either from parents, friends, school, etc and we make this narrative our own. These narratives shape our idea about our life, about our country and about our people around us. Our schools/education system in modern media has also given us a narrative of India, the world, society, etc. One narrative on our country is that India is an artificial nation created by the British. Along with this, similar narrative is that ancient Indian thought tradition is an artificial construct comprised to multiple diversity and  British artificially put these together into one word – Hinduism. Personally, I was always uncomfortable with these narratives and never internalized this but never had the language to counter these with any wisdom or proof. One has to therefore reluctantly keep quiet owing to lack of an effective counter-narrative. The good news in recent times is that the counterpoint to this dominant narrative is emerging. While this is emerging from various people, one dominant voice in the early 21st Century is that of Rajiv Malhotra who has authored a few books – two books in particular Being Different and Indra’s Net have focussed on some aspects of this counterpoint. This write-up primarily uses Rajiv’s narrative (though I have added some extra points from my own limited reading) to propose a counter narrative. This is however a very deep and a difficult topic to cover in a few words – the attempt is to sketch an outline that can enable us to appreciate this at a high level. Readers can refer to individual books recommended above to get into more details.

First, I will provide a statistic which is interesting. I am starting with a soft core frivolous data to enter into a hardcore intellectual topic. The table below sourced from internet gives the total land under cultivation in a few countries. It is surprising to me as to why even countries larger than India have lesser area under cultivation than India.  I do not want into stray into debates of productivity, how much farm do we really need, etc, I will just say that this is a physical proof for me of the special nature of the land in this country – is this fact alone not enough to look at our geography with special eyes?

Rank	Country	Cultivated land (km2)	Cultivated land (%)	Arable land (km2)	Arable land (%)	Date
—	World	17,298,900	11.61	15,749,300	10.57	2005
1	United States	1,669,302	18.22	1,650,062	18.01	2005
2	India	1,535,063	51.63	1,451,810	48.83	2005
3	China	1,504,350	16.13	1,385,905	14.86	2005
4	Russia	1,192,300	7.28	1,174,284	7.17	2005
5	Brazil	661,299	7.82	586,036	6.93	2005
6	Canada	474,681	5.22	415,573	4.57	2005
7	Australia	471,550	6.19	468,503	6.15	2005
8	Ukraine	333,847	55.3	324,791	53.8	2005
9	Indonesia	330,037	18.07	201,456	11.03	2005

Let me now get more serious. Let me turn to an oft repeated narrative about India – “India was never one. This was politically divided and had warring kingdoms that were always at war with one another. There was no unity in this land and we must thank the British to sieve us together into a single political unit. People from all over the world came into the country and contributed to its world view. Just look around us and one sees so much diversity. Therefore, we must recognize the diversity within our country and to protect it, we need to run this country using the Western word – Secularism. There is no Indian solution to protect this plurality. Without adoption of Secularism, our country has no basis for Unity and will split again into parts and get back into warring past. Even before Afghan and Turkish invasions, there were Hunas, Sakas, etc who came and settled into this country and contributed to its culture and therefore India does not even have a single culture. What are the current day India aspects that should have pride in India for? Cricket, Bollywood (ugghh..) and chicken Tikka are some items which come to mind owing to their worldwide fame. Maybe Yoga can be added here but without OM and Mantras…. This type of nonsense goes on and on. How does one react to this narrative? At the outset, one does have partial sympathy with some parts of this narrative – India indeed had multiple kingdoms even during Mahabharata times – there were the Yadavas, the Chedi Kingdom, the Madra Kingdom, the Mithila Kingdom, the Panchala Kingdom, etc each having its own king. It is also true that many throughout history were at war with one another. But does this mean that the country does not have any basis of unity? A family also has different individuals but these individuals stay together since they trace common ancestry. All staff in a company works together since the goal of the company appeals to them and binds them together. Army is composed of different people coming from different parts of the country but the idea of their nation binds them together. Did India have any common idea that bound its people together? If no such idea existed, why did Greeks say they came into “India” the moment they came into contact with Ambhi which is in Pakistan-Afghanistan border? They did not say that they came to Ambhi country but stated that they have entered India. Portuguese came to Cochin but they said they came to India. Marco Polo came to Orissa/ Andhra (not sure of the exact location) but recognized this as India. Chinese touched Kashmir and they said they were in India. Why were they referring to this land by one name even though this land had multiple political entities? This brings a bigger question – is it necessary to say that the country has to be ruled by one king in some distant past for it to be called as one nation? That is possibly the British narrative for defining a country but this was never the idea of India though this may be true for Europe.  Despite diversities, India always had one overall name – why? Did our education system answer this question?

Let me turn into a deeper question. If India did indeed have a single name by which Indians saw a connection with one another and even non-Indians saw a common binding among this diverse population, why is it so? Without an idea, no binding can happen – what was this idea, if at all that existed? Srimad Bhagavatam says that this whole land was called as Ajanabha and later when Bharata (this is not Bharat, the brother of Ram) ruled the country and sieved it together politically, it came to be called as Bharat. See the  fascinating point made here – Bharata is not the reason for the country to be referred to by a single name; it had a previous name, Ajanabha. Is this not interesting? The Puranas get into details giving names of various places of this country including river names and which roughly corresponds with Afghanistan in the East, Burma in the West, Tibet/ Kashmir in the North and Kanyakumari in the South. WE HAD A GEOGRAPHICAL UNITY IDENTITY ALSO SINCE THOUSANDS OF YEARS. Then there are names like Aryavarta, etc and this definition kept changing throughout history. This is not a British inspired identity – in fact, when British attacked, because we have a historical identity of unity, we came together and fought jointly. Our unity is innate, not acquired. But we are not taught this in our schools. Coming back to Bhagavatam, what is it that united India? It is not a king or some mythical political singularity in times of yore. Srimad Bhagavatam says – in the Bharatavarsha, the Lord assuming the form of Nara and Narayana reveal the true nature of truth through a life of तप and characterized by highest morality, enlightenment, renunciation, power, self-control and freedom from Ahamkaar. The uniting factor for a country is not a religious denomination or a king or a certain culture or a certain food habit, etc. It is a land with people who are together in the quest of truth, the ultimate truth knowing which all becomes known.

A deep idea of spirituality had united the people of this country. Is this not fascinating? But spirituality is again a western word with ambiguous meaning. India itself had multiple Darshana Shastraas (I am not in favour of usage of a so-called English equivalent word Philosophy or Spirituality) – Advaita, Dwaita, Vishisha Advaita, Yoga, Samkhya, Mimamsa, etc. These Darshanas had various schools known as Sampradayas who were known to debate with each other for many centuries. Despite this diversity, a 14th century Guru named Madhavacharya who was also the Shankaracharya of the Sringeri Math gave a single name for all these Sampradayaas – ASTIKA school of thought while also adding that India had NASTIKA schools also namely Buddhist, Jainas and Charvaka. All Indian Sampradaayas were coined one term because all these schools had one common factor viz that they were aligned with Vedas, the latter were not. Thus, alignment with Vedas became the binding factor and therefore they were called ASTIKA school of thought.  Since they were bundled together, the British orientalists bound the ASTIKA school together and gave a term Hinduism to all adherents of the ASTIKA school while others were classified as separate religions. Modern Hindus could therefore call themselves as ASTIKA instead of Hindus. The fact that there is diversity of faces, diversity of food, diversity of dress, diversity of cultural habits, etc did not stop the Gurus to bind the country into a single word – the land of ASTIKA. We may have had influences from outside in food, clothing, technology, mathematics, etc. but our lifestyles were ASTIKA. That is what made us a distinct country that is different from rest of the world and our ASTIKA thought process unique and different irrespective of multiple political boundaries within India. Time has come to expand this definition to include Buddhism and Jainism to ASTIKA since all the so-called diverse schools have certain common features not found in traditions developed outside India. Ideas behind the ASTIKA thought process bound the Indian nation for generations and not political identity, kingdom, food, culture, etc. Countries outside this geography did not have people following the ASTIKA way of living and so they were never mentally considered as a part of our geography. The upgraded ASTIKA (including Buddhism and Jainism) is then better placed to face many new thought waves hitting the country like a Western Universal globalization, communism, capitalism, humanism, etc. These may be labelled as the new NASTIKA since the Adhyatmic foundation is certainly not the same as ASTIKA. An ASTIKA view will then become our eyes with which we will view any new theory thrown into our thought net in India and we can accept these new ideas provided these do not scuttle our ASTIKA perspective but if this scuttles the ASTIKA perspective, we reject this.

This brings us to the main question of this paper – what is this ASTIKA view? Rajiv Malhotra in his two path breaking books – Being Different and Indra’s Net has noted the following significant unifying factors within the ancient Indian thought. These unity factors may have absorbed the numerous ideas, diversities, influences, etc for generations but still continued to remain true to its core. If we therefore talk of Unity in Diversity, our Unity is this ASTIKA world view. It is difficult to elaborate the complete concept in detail here but if this sounds sufficiently engaging, I will recommend the two books to the readers. So what is the core unifying factor of ancient Indian thought?

Integral Unity vs Synthetic Unity

Unity in the universe is inherent and not synthetic. World is not composed of disparate entities which have to live in close proximity to one another in a synthetic manner. World has emanated from the ONE – as Krishna says, the whole world is strung to me like all pearls in a necklace. There is interconnection between all of life and non-life; there is a SOOKSHMA TATTWA (extremely subtle property) that binds every aspect of the universe. Search for truth is therefore to know and realize this ultimate truth. While the search for the God particle in Berne or search for the Grand Unifying Theory of modern Physicists seems like a similar quest, this particle is assumed by scientists as a dead particle while Indian traditions which believes that this particle is a living, intelligent and comprehensive (PURNA) entity and all of universe is actually contained WITHIN such an entity. This world view will therefore look at or attempt to explore commonality with all aspects of the universe and attempt to unite disparity rather than force unity into a disparate universe. Interestingly, all of Indian thought recognizes this unity aspect of the universe irrespective of the specific Sampradaya one belongs to though it used to be called by different names – Brahman, Narayana, Om, Shoonya, etc. Even Taoism from China is based on similar metaphysics, they call this TATTWA as the Dao. Endeavours of modern science seem to be heading this direction since the past few decades. Artificial and synthetic factors like common history and common king are therefore not the basis of fundamental unity of the universe and therefore Indian idea of unity is Indian thought that recognizes innate unity of the universe in a far more fundamental way – any person anywhere subscribing to this world view becomes an ASTIKA irrespective of where he or she is located. Or else he or she becomes a NASTIKA even if located in India.

Embodied process of knowing vs disembodied knowledge

Adhyatma-Vidya is a major tool for spiritual discovery and guidance in ancient Indian thought. It is the disciplined and systematic knowledge of inner realm through precise observations made in higher states of consciousness. Mind is used an instrument for conducting these experiments with a claim that the SOOKSHMA TATTWA of the Universe can be known through these experiments. One of ten principle Upanishads starts with a question which a Shishya asks his Guru – What is the one thing that needs to be known knowing which ALL can be known? The boldness of this question raised thousands of years back can only be rivaled by modern scientists like Stephen Hawkins who are trying to arrive at a unified explanation of the universe. There is however one small difference – knowing as per Indian traditions involves the knower to change his or her mind and become part of the knowing unlike a scientist who conducts experiments on an external phenomena of which he is not part of. This dissonance with external phenomena can be called as disembodied knowing unlike Indian approaches which can be termed as embodied knowing. All Indian systems claim that human limits can be overcome by cleansing and de-conditioning the system of cognition, namely the mind, senses, memory and related faculties. This de condition reduces our ego and taking away ego from the equation will give us insight into the universe. This is again a unique perspective of Indian thought which later resonated in Chinese and Japanese civilizations also.

Chaos vs inherent uncertainty/ ambiguity

Fear of chaos is typical of NASTIKA position and is a fear that can easily overwhelm the mind. 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 controlling. Western depictions of India have a land of cacophony and chaos is a typical reaction. Over the years, our English educated brethren imbibed these ideas and themselves view India in the idea of chaos. Because the cosmology of the West is based on a synthetic unity of various diverse factors (god, nature and spirit distinction), it becomes riddled with anxieties and seeks to impose order so as to resolve differences relating to culture, race, gender, sexual orientation, and so on. Ancient Indian thought very clearly states that this diversity has come from a single source – both good and evil, anger and peace, good health and sickness, etc have come from a single source. The innate unity needs to be identified behind the diversity – diversity is not therefore a problem to be managed but one must go beyond the diversity to discover the innate unity in diversity. The discovery is our quest but there is no doubt that it exists. Only this tradition boldly said that even a Duryodhana got Swarga despite this aggressive lifestyle – forcing readers of Mahabharata to make efforts to discover unity not in superficial ways but in an embodied manner. Chaos in ancient India is therefore not a source of concern. A kumbh mela therefore looks chaotic or the Delhi spice market may look rowdy to a seer but the participants of the Mela see order with the chaos and are fully at peace with the arrangements – the inability to understand the order of the Mela goes not mean that the Mela does not have order but actually reflects limitations in cognitive scope of the brain of the cognizer who is unable to see order within the Mela. This shift in cognition brings peace within us while attempting to develop local solutions that work rather than attempt to impose order from outside in a disembodied manner.

Karma-reincarnation vs Single random life

A lot of work has been done by modern scientists by observing people who claim a past life experience and papers on this theme have been published. The results are not certain and while they do not seem to like the past life proposition, they have been unable to dislodge this owing to incredible results of the experiments. Bottomline is – we do not know. Belief in reincarnation is an out and out Indian world view. Some Greeks like Plato and Socrates also agreed with this proposition as well as some early Christians but it is said that even they got these views from Indians and not from Ancient Greek philosophy. Every action that is emanating from ego will generate Karma and consequences of this action will have to resolved in future experiences – such experiences if not happened in this life will necessarily occur in next life or lives. In the meantime, more ego driven actions will accumulate the stock of Karma. Modern science has not been able to dispel this world view and in fact, some of the famous people attracted to Indian world view are ex-physicists. Our whole society got created keeping in this principle in mind and day to day actions got determined by this principle. Even with a modern scientific spirit,when one reads the scriptures, one is stunned by the scientific spirit that pervades the logic and rationale given to explain the concept and its workings in our lives.

Uniqueness of Samskrita impacting vibrational levels in mind vs language as a mere mode of communication

Samskrita is a unique language. Samskrita mantras were discovered by Rishis through inner sciences. The mantra sounds are not a product of arbitrary conventions – there is a branch of ancient education called Nirukta. This branch of knowledge goes into the principle of sound and why certain words that have arisen from the experiences of the Rishis carry special vibrations which will help the chanters to benefit from these vibrations and discover the journey back to the source of all of life. The very vibration of mantras carries effects that are universal and rooted in cosmic unity. SAMSKRITA WORDS MUST THEREFORE NOT BE TRANSLATED. Numerous meditation systems have been developed using these sounds; we are aware of some recent experiments which have indicated the positive vibrations generated from the sounds of Samskrita mantras. Mantra therefore becomes an important technology or instrument for embodied knowing. Mantra may be further unpacked by observing that Vac(speech) is at four levels, from gross to increasing subtlety. Vaikari refers to speech one hears and is the grossest level. Madhyama refers to inner speech as in what one is thinking. Mental chatter is subtler than the spoke word. Western ideas of language do not go beyond these two levels – what is spoken and what is thought. But ancient Indian thought gives two more levels – Pashyanti when speech is unconscious only and not yet turned into a mental voice and even deeper than this is para, the transcendental level where the vac lives as potential i.e. unmanifest. Replacing Samskrita mantras with ordinary words removes the vibrational effects. A mantra carries not only meaning but the power and tapas SHAKTI imbued into it by its Rishis and chanters. This is again a unique contribution of Indian thought and some of the recent cutting edge sound research is trying to understand this in more detail.

All the above collectively forms the fundamental basis and contribution of ASTIKA world view. It is possible that some ideas may have been followed in other parts of the world but all these are collectively seen and practiced only in the geography of India for many millennia since the time of Upanishads. Other influences like Chicken Biryani or Samosa or potato or probably mathematics or tea & coffee may have been imports from outside but ancient Indian idea of unity is not dependent on these superficials. The core of unity is a lot deeper and some of the most critical factors on which this unity is based have been conveyed above. One question may arise among modern English educated namesake Hindus who are unfamiliar with their own scriptural traditions – is the above a Rajiv Malhotra created myth or is the ASTIKA definition indeed true? My humble submission would be that if they have given a chance to the Myths created by the western orientalists (and the modern day Indian Sepoys who are continuing this false narrative) for the last century (myths like Aryan invasion, for example) why not give a chance to a new Rajiv myth in their lives – Hahahaha. More seriously, one read of at least one scripture of ancient Indian thought like the Gita or the Srimad Bhagavatam or Vivekachudamani or Panchadasi or Yoga Patanjali Sutras or Samkhyakarika or even Dhammapada (ascribed to Buddha) will reveal this obvious truth to the reader. If we have given space to John Grisham or Sidney Sheldon or Harry Potters in our lives, is it not possible to take some time out to give space to at least any one of the above scripture in our long life and rediscover this obvious truth for ourselves?

How does the above explain modern India? This paper is not about the geographical idea of modern India. This paper seeks to define ancient Indian thought. Where there is thought convergence of ancient Indian world view summarized above among people living  anywhere in the world, such geography can be defined as Bharata. It however came to be called as Indian thought only because it was defined and designed in the current geography of India. Some of the new age movements in the west are offshoots of ancient Indian thought. No other part of the world defined the above ideas as Indians did in the Upanishads and hence these are named as Indian thought. Just like source of modern science is credited to the modern West with Newton and Galileo called as fathers of modern science though science as such belongs to all ( I will not mention here the names of Indian scientists who talked about gravity centuries before Newton), we are branding the ancient Indian world view as Indian thought. Whether we are able to preserve the geographical unity of India, there is a definite need to preserve the distinct world view of ancient Indian thought. Living life with these world views can be significant and substantial. It is for no odd reason that some of the ancient Indian contributions to the world – Ayurveda, Naatya Shastras, Dharma Sutras, Arthasastra, Shilpa Shastra, etc were all derived at based on the core principles enumerated above. In modern parlance, the ancient indian thought played the role of an operating system like Apple, Windows and Android and the numerous applications came into public domain ( like dance, music, law, etc) from the ancient world view. A world view can produce multiple disciplines that have so-called secular uses like entertainment and medicine – is this not fascinating  and it is unfortunate that none of us have been presented this perspective in our understanding of our own ancient thought. Preservation of this world view therefore becomes an imperative if more interesting applications come to be designed using this operating system. Such applications could include human relations, resolving society conflicts, poverty alleviation, architecture, country strategy, statecraft, governance and possibly even cutting edge scientific discoveries like neuroscience and medicine. If this operating system is however broken down and not allowed to perpetuate, it’s components will be digested into a Western Universal operating system and this will be akin to operating all mobiles using only Apple system – is this what we desire of our future? More importantly, development of new alternative applications may not come about if these aspects are digested into some other universal world views.

While there may be many questions, I will tackle just one last question. Why should people adopt Hinduism if this disrespects their current day traditions? My proposition is that this question is wrongly framed. In modern China, a Chinese of any denomination does not feel compromised if they extol Confucius who has a pan-Chinese identity and no one feels that they are compromising their identity by agreeing with Confucius. For some insanely wrong reason, Hinduism also came to be classified as a religion vis a vis other denominations like Islam and Christianity. If religion is defined by a world view based on the common features of ancient thought enumerated above, both Islam and Christianity are not religions or if the standards of Semitic religions are adopted (single prophet, single god, history centric, exclusivity driven logic), then Hinduism is not a religion by this logic. Indian thought therefore rightly uses the word – Darshana which stands for “to see”. This means that each Sampradaaya has a certain way of life or way to see life and the world. It is just a way of seeing life. Interestingly, while Indian thought developed numerous sub-strands of thought in the form of multiple Sampradaayas, all these were developed on a single operating system which had the features indicated above. People from other denominations anywhere in the world can therefore subscribe to the ancient Indian thought if they are agreeable to the features of this operating system. Why only Indians but even non-Indians can subscribe to the ancient Indian world view and still retain their individual identity. If they have disagreements with certain tenets, it is a problem they have to resolve by relooking at their own traditions. One is reminded of an episode in the life of Adi Shankara when he was confronted with Devi worshipers who indulged in human BALI practices. Adi Shankara converted them not by telling them to change from Devi to Vishnu or Shiva form of worship but reexplained the real truths behind the symbology of Devi and convinced them to reexplore their own tradition in the light of the real truth rather than decadent practices like human sacrifices. In the end, no one changes their culture and practices but continues to view the divine from within their own traditions but as a ASTIKA. Similarly, an integral unity based view of the world is found in Islam within the Sufi traditions and Muslims can dip into Sufi traditions, remain a Muslim and but subscribe to ancient Indian world view. This can make this person an ASTIKA while remaining a Muslim. Of course, the world has been taking Indian ideas selectively and map these to their own frameworks and re-exporting these back into India (for example, Yoga returning from outside India but sans the Mantras). This situation is a break-down of the comprehensiveness of Indian thought process and will lead to digestion of Indian thought by Western Universalism or some other order – this situation should not make ASTIKA adherents happy but worried (a deer does not feel happy being eaten by a tiger and does not state that it is happy surviving within tiger’s stomach). Claim to ASTIKA membership can be considered provided the key aspects summarized above are all adopted fully while retaining their individual cultural identity of their respective geography. To conclude therefore, irrespective of which geography a person comes from, the ASTIKA – NASTIKA world view can refine our current approach to look at religions in the current traditional limited form.

Our debates on religion vs science can be expanded than put into traditional perspectives of the divide which have outlived their utility many many decades back. Interestingly, the ASTIKA perspective will have no divide with science since its claims are equally based on a scientific approach of thinking and in fact much more aligned with modern science. We are at a time when our traditional categories of dividing society have outlived their utility. Traditional approach to solve the problem of diversity has remained useless owing to wrong categorization, wrong problem definition and wrong solutions developed as a result. The traditional Indian world view provides a response that can be dipped into. We approach the past an an innovative way with good knowledge of not making the mistakes of the past while creating a new future with the wonderful operating system of the ancient Indian world view. With such a noble vision, I will rest my case here.

SWASTI            OM TAT SAT