Author: Rajiv Malhotra
Publisher: Harper Collins. 474 pages
Book Review by Ramu Nakliba
Rajiv Malhotra directly challenges the West in this book. He challenges the Western perspective of the world’s problems. He challenges the very way the West views India and its shortcomings in the economic, political and spiritual arenas.
He cites dharma, the Hindu idea of right and wrong, of good and evil. He writes “I am simply using the dharmic perspective to reverse the analytical gaze which normally goes from the West to East and unconsciously privileges the former.”
He points out that this different Eastern perspective reveals the problems faced by Western nations. Whereas when Western thinkers look at the problems themselves, their methods do not reveal the ‘blind spots’ that Easterners can see.
He also asserts that India cannot be viewed as simply “a bundle of the old and the new, accidentally and uncomfortably pieced together, an artificial construct without a natural unity.”
India has in recent years, been growing at much faster rates of growth of gross domestic product than the United States. We believe that its growth rates are vastly understated simply because it is almost impossible, at its current stage of development for its government to track the transactions of millions of companies and retail stores in the thousands of towns and villages around India.
While India’s economic growth rate is understated, the real growth rate of the United States has not been adjusted downward to account for the inflation caused by printing and ‘electronic creation’ of trillions of US dollars that have been pumped into the US economy to finance its government’s deficit spending.
India’s expected rapid emergence as a major world economy is changing the way it is viewed by the people and leaders of the US and Europe. Therefore, India is no longer a ‘junior partner’ in a ‘global capitalist world,’ writes Malhotra. He asserts that India’s ‘distinct and unified civilization’ has the ability to ‘peacefully integrate’ various cultures, religions and philosophies prevailing in India.
He says that India’s value system, with its ‘ideas on divinity, the cosmos and humanity’ stand in stark contrast to the Western civilization’s fundamental assumptions. This book explores those ideas and assumptions.
This is a well-researched book with hundreds of books cited in its bibliography to back up and throw light on the various ideas and beliefs written about within its pages. Malhotra has put a lot of work into it and we congratulate him on this unique achievement.
