My rethinking of liberalism, and J. Sai Deepak's book

My twenties pulled me away in a direction which, at the time, I had no doubt was the single direction of progress. I surrounded myself with first-principle thinkers, ambitious and talented people with backgrounds in economics and the liberal arts. Over time, I discovered I had was most comfortable practicing and preaching the following values:

1. Equitable economic upliftment is the singular lens through which a government's performance must be evaluated - the economy must grow, and the disparity between the rich and poor must diminish. This alone, along with the development of public good such as health, sanitization and education - must be the focus of a government; other aspects such as religion, language, and culture are talking-points for elections, and are best avoided. 
2. We must understand the history of humanity as a power-struggle, where the people try to seize and retain power at the top while the masses try to throw off the yoke. There are no sides, no better characters or worse; there is only power and those trying to take hold of it. Therefore, if one is in a position of privilege at present, it probably owes to historical wrongs committed by their ancestors against other peoples and one must therefore be conscious of this privilege and atone for it
3. The world is moving towards a classless, global utopia where people can exercise their individual freedoms and extract the most benefit by selling their skills and ideas in an impartial global marketplace. This marketplace, since it is created by humans around the world, will ensure that the best and most interesting ideas, technologies and projects thrive (weaker/imperfect ideas and projects will perish). Additionally, it is beneficial to develop one's own personality to suit this global marketplace.
4. The individual has priority over any other social grouping - the individual's rights and desires are sacrosanct, and the individual can practice or believe as they wish, unless they intrude upon the liberties of another; other persons, social groups or orders may not comment or pass judgement on the individual's choices, practices or beliefs, as this would be tantamount to the reduction of the individual's freedoms.
5. First principle thinking is the basis of true knowledge - every system devised by human-beings must be questioned without the historical baggage using only essential axioms that are known to be true. The contrary is also valid: one must doubt every doubtable thing until one is left is pure truth (the Cartesian position).

In other words, I think of my 20s-self as a well-rounded liberal, which a penchant for solving problems like an engineer (move fast, break things if you must). Over the past few years, I find my momentum in this direction arrested. In some ways, I've even made a U-turn; a few things I valued earlier and some ideas I held true now seem childish, even laughable.

I attribute my 'change of heart' to the literature I read and the ideas I let myself be exposed to. Extracting myself from the modernist, materialist, liberal-capitalist heartland allowed me to question the truths I once thought axiomatic. They were my first-principles, until they were questioned.

The most interesting changes in my thinking have come from engaging with the histories of Western and Indian philosophy, and from familiarizing myself with various historical narratives. One such work that is now fresh in my mind is J. Sai Deepak's "India that is Bharat". As someone who has followed Sai Deepak extensively on social media for his well-articulated views, I recently found myself emotionally moved when he decimated Shashi Tharoor's Nehruvian idea of India in a popular debate. I thereafter proceeded to buy his book - which is the first book of a trilogy.

In his book, I found well-researched material and viewpoints that helped me further refine and develop my own views on various subjects. Going back to the philosophical U-turn I mentioned earlier, I believe my positions now can be articulated as follows:

1. An elected government has civilizational responsibilities also - Equitable economic development and the improvement of public goods are vital performance-metrics of any government, but its responsibilities do not end there. Adequately representation and the protection of the languages, culture, religions, artforms and the perspectives of its people are responsibilities of a government, in the interest of the continuity of a civilization.
2. Historical narratives are always ideologically driven, and one must grapple with particular facts and refrain from simplistic grand narratives (like "history of humanity is a power-struggle"). There are better and worse characters and institutions in our history, and we must learn about them. There are also better and worse form of oppression, which have different effects on our present day societies. One was most likely the oppressor as well as the oppressed simultaneously at various points in the past. Equating various privileges and/or disadvantages create false narratives that carry only political value.
3. The world is moving in a direction embedded with a particular ideology of power. This is no utopia. One must fight against this foreign ideology (that Sai Deepak terms coloniality) in order to create a respectful future with space for one's own worldview. As a corollary, it may be stated that the global marketplace is rigged. Unless the rules of the game are challenged, one's own place in the world is doomed.
4. The individual has certain inalienable rights, but there are places where societal (cultural) groupings must have priority over the individual. To view oneself as a family, tribe or nation is a human trait - and there are traditions and situations where these families, tribes and nations gain priority over the individual. Liberalism strives to make people autonomous and "free" (there is no choice to "not be free"). It aims to atomize individuals as "blank slates", free from all groupings and biases, so that they can be "rational independent actors". Liberalism claims that all bonds and ties (including one's family) must be freely chosen, and this allows corporations to have workers without any bonds, so that they can wage-slave away. It is Capitalism which thus profits from liberalism's end-game.
   Moreover, liberalism is premised on an abstract conception of individual selves as pure choosers, whose commitments, values and concerns are possessions of the self, but never constitute the self. Since our choices are never truly free (but shaped by our societal bonds) and because our choices and bonds shape the identity of our selves, the theory of the self must include room for cultural membership and for non-chosen attachments and commitments.
5. First principle thinking fails when you operate on the wrong level of abstraction, with incorrect base axioms, or without considering the practical side of problem-solving. This is especially important while solving problems at a societal scale, and creates a strong case to actually understand the prevailing worldviews and think about problems within these frameworks (e.g. immersing oneself in sampradayic schools and understanding why things are a certain way and proceeding to use tools within the system, may be a better problem-solving approach than reading a PDF summary of a philosophy and proceeding to challenge it from "first principles").

Apart from helping me develop on some of these ideas, J. Sai Deepak's book is an important work to understand the essence of Indian constitutional secularism as contrasted with Bharatiya civilizational acceptance of a plurality of views. It also explains the coloniality of English-language education in India, and the very reason why this blogpost is written in English and not in Tamil, Hindi or Sanskrit.

Notwithstanding the latter portion of the book which carries several essays, letters, minutes and speeches verbatim (as Sai Deepak goes out of his way to demonstrate primary sources, lest it be said that he is misquoting/misinterpreting evidence) making this book more tedious read than it should have been (this will, I'm afraid, come at the cost of some readership), "India that is Bharat" is an essential read for a 21st Century Indian.

The Idea of India - Sunil Khilnani [Book Review]

I finished reading Sunil Khilnani's book "The Idea of India" yesterday, although I felt there was scope for it to be renamed by prefacing the title with the word "Defending", and adding "Nehruvian" after the definite article.

In fact, I'd suggest a renaming of the chapters to succinctly capture their intent and message:

Chapter 1: Democracy A Portrait of Nehru as the Father of the Nation

Chapter 2: Temples of the Future How India's Economy Went bust

Chapter 3: Cities Erasing all of India's pasts to force Indians into Modernity

Chapter 4: Who is an Indian?  India is not Hindu.

As one would expect given the author's stature, the book is incredibly articulate and "combative" (in Amartya Sen's words) albeit ideologically narrow. It is a classic work from the liberal school which believes it is protecting everything by suffocating all individual things. I quote the author here:

Just at the English language placed all Indians, at least in principle, at a disadvantage of equal unfamiliarity, so, too Chandigarh could not be seized or possessed by any one group.

Throughout the book, one gets the sense that this ideological censor that the Nehruvian idea places on the citizens of this country (which the author seems to accept as essential) is what holds India together. Without it, there would be only anarchy and bloodlust, and a brutal suppression of human rights. But no evidence is provided to support such a flimsy theory.

In fact, the author contrasts India's abysmal average 3% annual growth (between 1950 and 1991) against the rapid advancement of the Asian Tigers - China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. That post-independence India's social, economic and political structures may be in disagreement with the needs of its people causing this slothfulness comes up momentarily, but the author is quick to pour cold water on any alternative ideas of India that may help aid the emancipation of the masses. "Liberal" democracy (of the colonial tradition) at all costs, with the state performing a missionary-like role of a societal reformer, is the only solution offered. Hundreds of millions of Indians have the wrong world view, a handful of experts have got it right.

The author however succeeds in painting a picture of the 1950s India in which Nehru found validation in the theories of expert economists like Mahalanobis, and tried to centrally plan India's growth - by making heavy industries and defence public sector undertakings, tightly controlling imports and exports, and regulating free-market capitalism in select sectors through a licence-raj. He also shows the limitations of the Congress in driving change at the local levels, and the futile history of land reforms in India. Later in the Indira Gandhi period, appeasement politics further drains India's money reserves, leaving it on the brink of bankruptcy in 1991. Apart from jokingly citing the disparaging phrase "Hindu rate of growth" as a cause of India's crawling development, the author refuses to put our leaders' erstwhile policies under further scrutiny. Instead, he moves on to speak about India's history and culture.

In this part, it is interesting how the author skips the Islamic period of Indian history completely while bringing out the three main "wrongs" in modern India: one from the pre-Islamic Hindu period - Caste; another created by colonialism - the great rift between urban and rural India; and the final one from post-Independence India - Hindu nationalism or Hindutva. The word "proselytization" doesn't occur once in the entire book. The author further goes on to explain how Muslims lost trust in India's ability to protect them, which in turn led to the creation of Pakistan. Can India protect Kashmir's muslims, he asks (the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits is not mentioned).

One understands the author's theory as follows: it is the duty of every citizen who identifies with a numerical majority to downplay their cultural distinctiveness and beliefs, and hold them as secondary to Nehru's (Khilnani's) Idea of India. Simultaneously, it is the right of all individuals who identify with a numerical minority of any kind to assert themselves and their cultural distinctiveness, so that the state can be perceived as pluralistic. And both these principles are embedded in the paternalistic attitude of a state that thinks it knows best.

This book could only have been written by someone of Indian (more specifically, Hindu elite) origin who is thoroughly educated in the western tradition, until those are the only filters through which their mind processes reality. 

The author is therefore able to assume the position of the "real Indian", re-describing processes and events until it supports their ideal of the world. Further, the position assumed by the author enables him to think of the "other" (SCs, Dalits, Muslims, Christians) like a saviour; it is precisely this position that allows the author to rationalize all actions, including acts of violent extremism, of the "other", and condemn majority Hindus whenever any self-assertion begins, an intellectual self-flagellation.

The book in its entirety is a masterpiece of intellectual colonialism. It is limited in its understanding of democracy (anything against the author's views is called "majoritarianism"), and of liberty (as it is only a specific type of freedom that the author supports). In some ways, it is similar to what James Mill may have written about India if he was living in 1998.

Mill's History of British India begins with a remarkable preface. He says that his never having been to India and knowing none of the native languages are an advantage, and a guarantee of his objectivity. But, far from being objective, his is, as he says, a 'critical, or judging history' whose judgements on Hindu customs and practices are particularly harsh. He denounces their 'rude' and 'backward' culture for its ignorance, superstition, and mistreatment of women, and leaves no doubt that he favours a thoroughgoing reform of Indian institutions and practices.

The few constructive points of the book are empirical, not ideological, in nature. India's transition from the first two decades after independence into the emergency under Indira Gandhi, and later into the caste- and regional- politics on the 80s and 90s is well brought out. The aspirations and limitations of the leaders at various points are also explained. In fact, the book has much to offer in terms of political and economic analysis, but sadly chooses to approach every aspect through a narrow ideological framework.

I understand that the book was written a few years after the Babri Masjid demolition, and the author may have intended this book as a rebuttal of certain ideas that were capturing Indian minds. But he goes to the extent of saying that "to Hindu nationalists, Ayodhya has telescoped into a single narrative otherwise unrelated events: the birth of Ram 9,00,000 years ago, the entry of the Mughals into India in 1526, and the rise of the BJP to correct wrongs of the past..." In 1998, there was no Supreme Court judgement on the Ram Mandir, but to say that there was no original temple in Ayodhya that was destroyed with so much conviction points to the fundamental dangers of the author's ideology.

I'd like to summarize the book in two lines: This is the author's limited understanding of India, that does little to help the reader understand the process or prepare a way forward into the future. It is a narrative of India that is confused, helpless and ashamed of itself.  

Tibetan Buddhism: Kindness through extraordinary courage

📔(10/n in 2021) I picked up "Fundamentals of Tibetan Buddhism" at a homestay in Harsil Valley (Uttarakhand) on my recent vacation. Found it an insightful read about the history, philosophy and practices of the people of Tibet.

The philosophy was familiar to me, as I am aware of Buddhist Sunyavada doctrines and Nagarjuna's works. The book expanded my understanding of the history of Tibetan Buddhism, and the concept of Vajrayana (which amalgamates Mahayana Suttas with Tantric practices to accelerate one's transformation into a Buddha in one lifetime).

A few takeaways among many:

1️⃣ I'm sure this has been a quiz question before: How was the institution of the Dalai Lama created, and what does "Dalai Lama" mean? A: The youngest and currently dominant Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism gained prominence in the 1570s as the Lama Sonam Gyatso formed an alliance with the Mongol chieftain Atlan Khan. The word "Dalai" comes from the Mongol word for Ocean. And Dalai Lama means a teacher who has the depths of an ocean.

2️⃣ Another piece of trivia: Buddhism became the state religion of Mongolia under Kublai Khan. Ghenghiz Khan subjugated Tibet in the 1200s, and later the Khan's grandson Godan took Sakya Pandita Gyeltsen as his guru and adopted Buddhism. The teacher's nephew Chogyal Phagpa became Kublai Khan's guru. At this time, Buddhism became the state religion of Mongolia (53% of Mongolia's population were Buddhists as of 2010).

3️⃣ It is believed that all the three paths (1) Doctrine of emptiness, (2) Infinite Compassion, and (3) Karmic law of cause and effect (including "Dependent Origination") lead to realization of the same whole - that is Enlightenment. I personally found the interconnectedness of these routes fascinating.

4️⃣ A Buddha is said to operate in three planes of existence simultaneously: the universal (dharmakaya), the ideal (sambhogakaya) - or pure land, and the individual (nirmanakaya). Dharmakaya or Truth Body relates to the realization of emptiness in the phenomenological world. Sambhogakaya or Bliss Body relates to what I think is a (Vijnanavadin/Brahmanic) concept of a pure non-material plane of existence without defilement. Nirmanakaya or Form Body relates to the expression of purity in the phenomenal world.

5️⃣ Bodhicitta (heart of an enlightened mind) is an incredibly brave concept. It means the engagement of one's enlightened mind for the well-being of all other sentient beings. One concept I loved is the idea that everyone else in a previous janma could have been our mother or dearest friends; so when we see these "mother sentient beings" suffering, we spontaneously desire to release them from their torment.

Having read this book, I feel worse about what happened to the people of Tibet in the 1950s when the Chinese Communists invade their land "to liberate them". It takes extraordinary courage to build philosophy that is so kind.